Sanders Lowballs Vermont Gun Deaths by an Order of Magnitude

[Igel]

71. Yes and no.

Remember, data are mute; they don't speak.

When looking at gun ownership, you need to look at households. "Percentage of adults" is all well and good, but that's possibly not very useful. The percentage of households owning guns has decreased in most states over the last 40 years.

The number of guns per capita's increased.

Number of people killed per capita by others using guns has decreased.

We really need to distinguish between homicides in the strict sense and suicides. If my father hadn't committed suicide by gun, he'd have done it some other way; "ban guns, eliminate those suicides" doesn't get causation quite right.

There are all kinds of subcategories and ways of disaggregating the data--by age, SES, ethnicity, geographic area, urban/suburban/rural. They can all be used to support some claim--most of which are correct. The problem is when there's a claim without any context or competing, correct claims; then that one claim is taken (or intended to be) the complete picture, when it's really not. At that point the (partial) truth is worse than a lie.